News

Fragmentology Launched

Fribourg (Switzerland), 11 December 2018. Fragmentarium (https://fragmentarium.ms), the digital laboratory for medieval manuscript fragments, announced today the launch of Fragmentology (http://fragmentology.ms), an international, peer-reviewed Open Access journal dedicated to publishing scholarly articles, research notes, and reviews concerning medieval manuscript fragments. The first issue ( http://fragmentology.ms/issues/1-2018/) contains articles on a range of topics, spanning from the early middle ages to the twenty-first century:

Fragmentology welcomes submissions, both articles and research notes, on any aspect pertaining to Latin and Greek manuscript fragments in the Middle Ages. Fragmentology is based at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland), and is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, and the Zeno Karl Schindler Foundation. Authors of articles, research notes, and reviews published in Fragmentology retain copyright over their works and have agreed to publish them in open access under a Creative Commons Attributionlicense. Submissions are free, and Fragmentology does not require payment or membership from authors or institutions.

Under the direction of Martin Wagendorfer, the project began its work in October 2018 and will digitize 214 fragment shelfmarks by 2020, publishing the images along with scientific descriptions on Fragmentarium.

Fragmentarium Phase II Announced

The Fragmentarium team is pleased to announce that the Swiss National Science Foundation has approved the project “Fragmentarium Phase II”, to run from January 1, 2019 to December 31, 2022. The goal of “Phase II” is to turn Fragmentarium from a pilot project into an open research laboratory for medieval fragments. This news means that more and greater things can be expected from Fragmentarium as it seeks to achieve a global scope.

Fribourg Workshop Program Released

The Preliminary Program for the Fragmentarium workshop "Bits and Pieces" is now available! The papers and discussion sessions are open to the public; those interested in attending are asked to contact us at fragmentarium@unifr.ch.

Fragmentarium Fribourg Workshop

The next Fragmentarium workshop "Bits and Pieces. Medieval Manuscript Fragments in the Digital Age" has been announced. October 5-6, the 2017-2018 Case Studies fellows, along with supervisors and leading fragmentologists will discuss their findings at the Université de Fribourg, home to Fragmentarium and e-codices. More details will be forthcoming. Those interested should contact Fragmentarium at fragmentarium@unifr.ch.

Fragmentarium and Fellow at the 41. Kölner Mediaevistentagung

The 41. Kölner Mediaevistentagung, having as its theme "Die Bibliothek/ The Library/ La Bibliothèque. Denkräume und Wissensordnungen", will feature the director of Fragmentarium and e-codices, Prof. Dr. Christoph Flüeler, who will speak on "Virtual Medieval Manuscript Libraries" on Wednesday, 12 September at 11:30. The day before, at 15:00, Fragmentarium fellow, Dr. Katharina Kaska, will speak on "Netzwerke ohne Grenzen und die Grenzen des Netzwerkes in der hochmittelalterlichen Buchproduktion."

Macerata Students (re)Publish Munich Fragments

On May 3, 2018, the Laboratorio di Umanesimo Digitale of the Università di Macerata got to experience first-hand Fragmentarium’s approach to interoperability. The students examined the digitizations of early printed works hosted at the Münchener DigitalisierungsZentrum of Fragmentarium Partner, the Bayerische StaatsBibliothek, in particular, looking at the fragments incidentally digitized in the bindings. Using IIIF to import the images into Fragmentarium, the students published a selection of fragments, harnessing the power of interoperability to make a contribution to fragment studies. Their results are now online!

Australian Scholar Publishes Canberra Fragments

Dr. Rose Faunce of the Australian National University in Canberra has published five fragments from the ANU’s collection. She has accompanied these beautiful digitizations with detailed descriptions, transcriptions, and research into their provenance, tracing four to Otto Ege’s biblioclastic work.

Gottschalk Antiphonal Comes to Fragmentarium

Lisa Fagin Davis has now published on Fragmentarium her reconstruction of the Gottschalk Antiphonal, the subject of her Ph.D. thesis and of her landmark 2000 study published by Cambridge University Press. See also her discussion of the process, including videos, on her world-renowned Manuscript Road Trip blog.

Fine Books & Collections Features Fragmentarium

The North American Quarterly, Fine Books and Collections, includes a feature on Fragmentarium in their Spring 2018 issue, available at select Newsstands. For more information, see the magazine's website.

Simmons College Students Reconstruct Book of Hours

Lisa Fagin Davis’ Simmons Library Science students have published their reconstruction of part of Otto Ege's "50 Original Leaves" no 30, by uploading, cataloguing, and sequencing 27 known leaves from 27 different collections. Their work validates Fragmentarium's promise, both as a platform for reconstructing massively dispersed manuscripts and as an instrument for bringing research into the classroom.

Leeds 2.0

At this year's International Medieval Congress, the Institut de Recherche et d'Histoire des Textes (IRHT) is organizing a session on the burnt library of Chartres: "From Myth to Memory: The Lost Medieval Libraries of Chartres". In what promises to be a must-see event, Fragmentarium collaborator, Veronika Drescher, will present her theories on how the medieval library of Saint-Père de Chartres came into being in a piece entitled: "Remembering the beginnings of a lost library: The case of Saint-Père-en-Vallée."

When: 2 July 2018, 14:15-15:45

Where: International Medieval Congress, The University of Leeds

LIBeR International Summer School 2018

The University of Cassino, in cooperation with the Abbey of Montecassino, has announced the LIBeR Summer School "Trends in Manuscript Studies. Sources, Issues and Technologies", naming Fragmentarium’s own William Duba to give the introductory conference. The five-day school in Cassino (Frosinone, Italy) will feature daily sessions at the University of Cassino, followed by workshops at the legendary Archive of Montecassino, where students will work with the incomparable treasures there. Pre-registration is now open.

When: 25-29 June 2018

Where: Cassino and Monte Cassino

Fellows and Friends at Kalamazoo

At the 2018 International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, Fragmentarium Fellow, Elizabeth Hebbard, has organized a roundtable entitled "Methods and Tools for Reuniting Manuscript Fragments". Fragmentarium Fellow Elena Iourtaeva will present her Case Study on Boston-Area Fragments, and Lisa Fagin Davis will share her experiences using Fragmentarium in the classroom.

Fragmentarium director, Prof. Dr. Christoph Flüeler will give the paper "Describing Fragments as Physical Objects: Working with Fragmentarium" at the conference Manuscript cataloguing in a comparative perspective: state of the art, common challenges, future directions, to be held at the Hamburg Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures. Attendants will also not want to miss the presentation by Dr. Marina Bernasconi, "How digital libraries can influence the description of manuscripts: working with e-codices".

Manuscript IDs on the Way to an International Standard

As a follow up to last year's meeting, the director of Fragmentarium, Christoph Flüeler, together with the director of the Institut de Recherche et d'Histoire des Textes, François Bougard, and the director of the Department of Manuscripts and Early Printed Books of the Bayerische Staatsbibiliothek, Claudia Fabian, are organizing "Manuscript IDs : pour un Identifiant unique des manuscrits 2". The discussions could result in an official proposal of a standard (tentatively named ISMI for International Standard Manuscript Identifier). For more information, see the public announcement.

Fragmentarium Director At Oxford Symposium

Christoph Flüeler, director of Fragmentarium and e-codices, will participate in the Symposium "Disiecta Membra Musicae: The Study of Medieval Music Manuscript Fragments ca. 800–1500", to be held at Magdalen College. He will deliver a paper entitled "Fragmentarium – Digital Research Laboratory for Medieval Manuscript Fragments. Case Studies on Music Manuscript Fragments".

When: 19-21 March 2018

Where: Magdalen College, Oxford

Fragmentarium To Attend the First Francophone Meeting Dedicated to IIIF

Fragmentarium and e-codices at "Visual Approaches to Cultural Heritage". Project Managers Maria Widmer (e-codices) and William Duba (Fragmentarium) will present "e-codices and Fragmentarium. Building for and Building upon the Interoperability Paradigm" at the Consortium of European Research Libraries (CERL) Seminar held at the ETH Zurich Library, on March 18. The complete programme and information on (free) registration have been published online.

Fragmentarium Fellow addresses Fribourg Crowd

Fragmentarium Fellow Ruth Mullett, researcher working on the Bodleian Case Study, will speak on: "Fragments in Context: cataloguing manuscript fragments in incunabula. A Fragmentarium case-study at the Bodleian Library", in a talk organized by the Medieval Studies Institute of the University of Fribourg.

Fragmentarium on demand in Erlangen

In connection with the ten-year anniversary of the SCRIPTO Program, the Chair of Medieval and Early-Modern Latin Philology is organizing on November 16 an international conference entitled "Text und Überlieferung im lateinischen Mittelalter" (Text and Transmission in the Latin Middle Ages). At this event, Fragmentarium collaborator Veronika Drescher will present a paper entitled "Die Fragmente von Saint Père-en-Vallée. Rekonstruktion einer mittelalterlichen Klosterbibliothek", (The Fragments of Saint Père-en-Vallée. The Reconstruction of a Medieval Abbey Library) which stems from the research for her Ph.D. thesis.

Fragmentarium on Swiss National Television

Fragmentarium was featured on the (French) Swiss National News Show, "le 1930", shot on the site of our Partner Institution, the Abbey Library of St. Gallen. The Director of the Project, Prof. Dr. Christoph Flüeler shows off one of St. Gallen's many in-situ fragments, as well as the e-codices digitization lab. Look for guest appearances from Fragmentarium's own Psalterium Gallicanum as well as the Vergilius Sangallensis.

Fragmentarium Fellow at the Monasteries in the Digital Humanities Conference

Fragmentarium Fellow Ivana Dobcheva will be presenting the new Austrian Case Study "Modellfall Fragmentendigitalisierung – Die mittelalterlichen Fragmente des Klosters Mondsee" at the Monasteries in the Digital Humanities Conference in Czȩstochowa, Poland. She will giving a paper entitled "Reading monastic history in bookbinding waste: Manuscript fragments from the Benedictine monastery of Mondsee and their new digital home Fragmentarium".

Fragmentarium Launched

On Friday, 1 September 2017, Fragmentarium officially opened its doors to the public in a ceremony at the St. Gall Abbey Library. Over the coming weeks, months, and years, we will be publishing online more and more fragments, reconstructions, and studies of fragments.

Christoph Flüeler, Project Director of Fragmentarium, together with his sister Brigitt Flüeler and Cornel Dora, Stiftsbibliothekar of St. Gall at the Launch

Photo: Joon Ki Choi

5 September 2017

Fragments and Fragmentarium at the Österreichischer Bibliothekartag 2017

Fragmentarium will be participating in the Österreichischer Bibliothekartag 2017, in Linz Austria, from Tuesday September 12 to Friday September 15. On Wednesday 13 in a session dedicated to fragments, Fragmentarium team member Veronika Drescher will be presenting the paper “FRAGMENTARIUM und die digitale Fragmentenforschung”. She will be joined by Fragmentarium fellow Katharina Kaska (Modelfall Fragmentendigitalisierung — Die mittelalterlichen Fragmente des Klosters Mondsee) and friend of Fragmentarium Michaela Scheibl (Die mittelalterlichen Handschriftenfragmente des Chorherrenstiftes Seckau). For more information, see the program.

3 August 2017

The Abbey Library of St. Gall and the Medieval Institute of the University of Fribourg are pleased to invite you cordially to the Opening of

Fragmentarium Second Planning Meeting

Fragmentarium announces that the Second Planning Meeting will be held at St. Gall Abbey, 30 August to 1 September 2017. At the meeting, Fragmentarium Fellows will present the results of their research and will then join a select group of senior researchers and manuscript librarians to help chart the next phase of the Fragmentarium project.

From 31 May to 2 June, 2017, Fragmentarium partner, the Herzog August Bibliothek, hosted the 2017 Case Study Workshop, made possible through the support of the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach foundation and the Handschriftenzentrum of the Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig. The Fragmentarium team, met with fellows and supervisors involved in the 2017-2018 Fragmentarium case studies, as well as with other specialists in Fragmentology and the Digital Humanities. After hands-on with the Fragmentarium platform, the workshop featured lively discussions on strategies to describe fragments, especially ones with elements of decoration or musical notation.

Photo: Elena Iourtaeva

The Herzog August Bibliothek’s Director of the Department of Manuscripts and Special Collections, Dr. Christian Heitzmann, organized with Fragmentarium fellow Antje Hoffmann a special examination of some of the library’s musical fragments.

The fellows then presented the projects that they will work on in the coming season. Stay tuned for details on those!

Photo: Gerda Huisman

3 August 2017

Fragmentarium and Manuscript IDs

On 26-27 April, the Institut de Recherche et d'Histoire des Textes - Paris hosted a Workshop on Manuscript IDs. The goal of the workshop was to compare various national initiatives to assign identifiers to manuscripts and to launch a joint initiative to standardize such methods. Fragmentarium was present and engaged in the workshop. For more information, see the program .

Houghton Fellowship Announced

The Houghton Library of Manuscript Studies has announced that it is accepting applications from Harvard University graduate students for a 2017-2018 Graduate Student Fellowship, in partnership with Fragmentarium. The deadline for Applications is April 15, 2017.

25 March 2017

Schoenberg Fellowship Announced

The Schoenberg Institute of Manuscript Studies has announced that it is accepting applications from graduate students attending universities in the greater Philadelphia area for its 2017-2018 Graduate Student Research Fellowship, which it is offering in partnership with the Free Library of Philadelphia and Fragmentarium. The deadline for Applications is April 1, 2017. For more information, see the official announcement.

10 March 2017

International Conference

Wolfenbüttel, May 31 - June 02, 2017 – The second international Fragmentarium conference will take place at the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel.

Videos of „Le Temps“

Veronika Drescher is working as a guest researcher at the Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes (IRHT) in Paris until end of June 2017.

7 October, 2016

Conference Report

The international conference „Ex parte enim cognoscimus – Current State of Research on Medieval Fragments“ took place from June 6-8, 2016, at the University of Fribourg. In the course of these three days, manuscript scholars met with IT and photography experts to discuss ongoing work on the Fragmentarium platform with special focus on topics such as „Description Criteria for Medieval Fragments,“ „Metadata“ and „Photographic Reproduction.“ The program opened on Monday with an introduction to the web application followed by hands-on training, it continued the next day with a more general overview of topics relevant to digital fragmentology, and it concluded with a presentation of the six case studies that will be carried out in the next twelve months. The conference has been supported by SNSF, SAHS and the University of Fribourg.

Group photograph of the conference participants at dinner.

October 7th, 2016

Fragmentarium in the News

Fragmentarium has been attracting interest not only among international experts, but outside the relatively small group of digital fragmentologists. Several Swiss newspapers are reporting on the project and its web application:

Call for application: Project manager of Fragmentarium (60-80%)

The candidate must be a specialist in at least one of the following fields: palaeography, codicology, textual criticism, digital humanities. He or she will have an excellent professional network, be able to lead a team of collaborators and will take part in the fundraising. The project is located at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. Starting date: May 1st, 2016, or date to be settled. Deadline for application: March 31st, 2016

March 8th, 2016

Zeno Karl Schindler/Fragmentarium Fellowship 2016

Pierre Chambert Protat, Paris, Campus Condorcet, is our second Zeno Karl Schindler Foundation/Fragmentarium Fellow this year. His Case study is dealing with the dispersed library of Florus of Lyon. Title: Rendre la bibliothèque de Florus de Lyon à son intégrité (Restore the library of Florus of Lyon to its wholeness).

Call for application: Fellowship Abbey Library of Saint Gallen

We invite postdoctoral candidates to apply for a Fragmentarium fellowship. The theme of the research – which will be carried out between June 2016 and June 2017 – will be the biblical fragments preserved at the Stiftsbibliothek St. Gall. Applications should be submitted by February 28th, 2016.

Call for applications: Fellowship for Fragmentarium Case study at the University Library Leipzig

We invite postdoctoral candidates to apply for a Fragmentarium fellowship. The theme of the research – which will be carried out between June 2016 and June 2017 – will be the medieval fragments preserved at the Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig. Applications should be submitted by February 21st, 2016.

Zeno Karl Schindler Foundation/Fragmentarium Fellowship 2016

Ruth Mullett, Ph.D. candidate in Medieval Studies at Cornell University, has been nominated as a fellow of the Zeno Karl Schindler Foundation. Her project, which has been conceived as a case study, will result in a digital catalogue of the in-situ medieval manuscript fragments of the Bodleian Library’s incunabula bindings.

Saint-Omer, August 25, 2015 – BIBLISSIMA summer school: Reconstituting a Medieval Library Today, the Example of Saint-Bertin. Veronika Drescher (Fragmentarium) takes part in the summer school and gives a short presentation of Fragmentarium: Fragmentarium. Laboratory for Digital Research on Medieval Fragments.

President: Christoph Flüeler (e-codices/Fragmentarium), with the following presentations:

Challenges in the Systematic Digitization of All Medieval Manuscripts at the Bibliothèque nationale de France by Matthieu Bonicel, Bibliothèque nationale de Franc

The Pilot Phase for the Digitization of Medieval Manuscripts in German Collections: An Interim Report by Carolin Schreiber, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek

Greek Manuscripts at the British Library: Reflections on an Almost-Complete Digitization Project by Cillian O’Hogan, British Library

Fragmentarium: A Scholarly Network That Enables Libraries, Collectors, Researchers, and Students to Upload Medieval Manuscript Fragments and to Describe, Transcribe, and Assemble Them Online by Sylviane Messerli, University of Fribourg/e-codices – Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland

Copenhagen, October 9-11, 2014 – Consortium of European Research Libraries, 6th International Conference of the Manuscript Librarians Expert Group. Digital and Traditional Manuscripts: Challenges of a Great Migration. Ramona Fritschi (e-codices): Fragmentarium. A Project of an International Research Environment for Medieval Manuscript Fragments.

Copenhagen, April 2-4, 2014 – 15th seminar on the care and conservation of manuscripts at the University of Copenhagen, Christoph Flüeler (e-codices/Fragmentarium): Restoration and digitization - a complementary approach.

Planning Meeting. Fragmentarium

Cologny (Geneva), January 30 – February 1, 2014

A total of twelve representatives of libraries and universities from Europe as well as from the United States took part in the meeting. The goal was to learn about the current state of fragment research and cataloging standards, as well as to lay the foundations for systematic research on medieval fragments. The meeting was sponsored by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences, the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Martin Bodmer Foundation. Participants: Matthieu Bonicel (Bibliothèque nationale de France and Biblissima), Lisa Fagin Davis (Medieval Academy of America), Andreas Fingernagel (Österreichische Nationalbibliothek), John Haeger (Stanford University Libraries), Timothy Janz (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana), Christoph Mackert (Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig), Scot McKendrick (The British Library), Marco Palma (Università degli Studi di Cassino), Nigel Palmer (St Edmund Hall, Oxford University), Agamemnon Tselikas (Center for History and Palaeography of the National Bank of Greece Cultural Foundation), William Stoneman (Harvard University).